From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERfertilisers to pre-empt famine. The results were spectacular, more thandoubling the national maize harvest and averting widespreadhunger. 77Governments also need to address the need of small farmers forsecure title to their land, especially for women (who in many caseshave never enjoyed independent rights to the land), includingthrough land reform where necessary. (Land rights are discussedmore fully in Part 2.)As noted above, governments need to support research and developmentto produce the kinds of seeds and other technologies that smallfarmers need. Despite the much greater importance of agriculture totheir societies, developing countries invest only one-ninth of whatindustrial countries put into agricultural R&D as a share of agriculturalGDP (including both public and private sources). 78 Much of thatis geared to large-scale export agriculture with limited relevance tosmall farmers. Seventy per cent of global R&D on agriculture is undertakenby profit-driven transnational corporations. 79Yet public sector R&D has clearly worked. The publicly fundedConsultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),the international network of agricultural research institutes thatspearheaded the Green Revolution, has released more than 8,000improved crop varieties over the past 40 years.Successful state intervention can benefit consumers too, byenabling farmers to increase productivity, selling cheaper but stillmaking a better living. Between 1980 and 2000, the Green Revolutionin Bangladesh meant that the real wholesale price of rice in Dhaka’smarkets fell from Tk.20 to Tk.11 per kilo. But over the same period,farmers increased yields from around 2 tonnes to 3.4 tonnes perhectare, effectively offsetting the impact of falling prices on theirincomes. 80Balancing the needs of producers and consumers is one of the coreroles of the state in regulating agricultural markets. Drastic changes infood prices, such as the recent surge in prices discussed on page 227,have a complex impact on poverty, depending on the balance ofproduction and consumption in any given household. Many poorfarmers are actually net consumers. One study estimates that 70–80142